It’s time for California to stop doing the same ol’ things that have put the state’s prison system under the yoke of federal judges.

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s plan to deal with orders from those federal judges to reduce the state’s prison population could do that. Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan would not.

Brown fought the good fight to comply with and then resist the judges’ orders to slash the number of prisoners, first pushing through his realignment plan to house more inmates at the county level and then appealing the judges’ orders for further reductions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But ultimately, he lost.

Now he’s under orders to get the population down to 137 percent of prison facilities’ designed capacity by Dec. 31, less than four months from now. One way to do that is to release nearly 10,000 prisoners, an unappealing prospect. Instead, Brown wants to expand capacity by 12,500 beds by the end of the year by sending more prisoners out of state, reactivating two in-state private facilities and leasing a third private facility to be staffed by state employees.

That would cost $315 million this budget year, the governor says, and the state Legislative Analyst’s Office pegs it at $400 million next year. Spending more than a billion dollars over three years on California’s already too-costly prison system — which spends nearly $50,000 a year per inmate — rather than on services for our law-abiding citizens, is throwing good money after bad. And it would do nothing to reduce the state’s 65 percent recidivism rate, which makes us keep spending money on the same bad apples over and over again.

Other downsides of the governor’s approach, according to the LAO’s report, which notes prominently that the plan addresses the short-term problem, but not the long-term:

• The state still would be about 8,800 inmates above the court-ordered cap by 2015-16.

• Logistical problems with prisoner transfers could still make early releases necessary.

• The state could be held in contempt and fined by the federal court.

Steinberg’s plan is completely different. Instead of releasing prisoners or contracting for more beds, he would put off the Dec. 31 deadline for three years by reaching a settlement with the plaintiff’s attorney’s whose lawsuits — charging that prison overcrowding resulted in inhumane levels of medical and mental health care for prisoners — resulted in the federal court overseeing the state system. Those attorneys have indicated a willingness to settle because Steinberg’s plan aims to reduce probation revocation by providing money to counties for mental health and substance abuse treatment programs that have demonstrated success in cutting recidivism.

He would also establish a commission to advise the governor and Legislature on ways to stay under the cap, including changes in sentencing and using evidence-based programs to cut recidivism.

Steinberg’s plan would not only be cheaper than the governor’s — $400 million over two years compared to $715 million — but it would offer the potential for long-term savings compared to current spending on prisons.

The LAO finds risks in the Steinberg plan, too:

• Settlement with plaintiffs’ attorney’s might not be reached, or the court might not approve it.

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• The three-year reduction in population is hard to quantify because it relies on the success of some unpredictable factors, such as how many probationers are actually diverted through treatment from returning to prison.

And what if a court-approved settlement is not reached by December? There are short-term options that would not flood the streets with dangerous criminals.

Brown could send, say, an additional 2,200 inmates to fire camps — with huge blazes like the Rim fire near Yosemite, professional firefighters could use the help — on top of the 3,800 planned. As The Sacramento Bee pointed out, there were 6,000 inmates in fire camps — which don’t count toward the population cap — in years past.

Nearly 10 percent of state prisoners are non-violent drug offenders. And 6,500 are 60 or older — not a demographic likely to commit street crime, but costly in terms of medical care. Releasing the least dangerous of those could help reach the cap.

For the long term, California needs a solution like Steinberg’s plan that could save money and free the state from the federal judges — not Brown’s expensive, short-term fix.